Counting cost of crime and how to reduce it

Photo / Filephoto

A male teenager on the wrong side of the tracks and heading towards a life of crime will cost society $3 million over his lifetime, Justice Minister Simon Power says.

Mr Power revealed the figure to a Victoria University-run conference, the Costs of Crime, in Wellington yesterday as an example of the importance of preventing crime in the first place.

He gave two hypothetical examples: a person convicted of burglary and sentenced to six months of home detention, and a person convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and jailed for 43 months.

The cost of processing the criminals, starting from police crime prevention to investigation to court processes to jail terms and rehabilitation, was $11,250 for the burglar, and $326,920 for the basher.

"We all know that if we can stop people from getting on the carousel of crime in the first place then the savings - not only monetary but also in terms of human cost - will be huge," Mr Power said.

He also noted a study that put the lifetime cost to society of a "chronic adolescent anti-social male" at $3 million.

Government spending on police, corrections and justice has roughly doubled to $3.4 billion in the past 14 years, adjusted for inflation, with little overall effect on crime - total recorded crime is falling, but violent crime is increasing - and a prison population that was bursting at the seams.

Recidivism rates have worsened.

Mr Power pushed the Government's work on the drivers of crime, including help for vulnerable young parents, early intervention programmes and tackling alcohol harm.

"Research suggests that if successful early intervention occurs with the 5 to 10 per cent of children with the most severe behavioural problems, there is the potential for a 50 to 70 per cent overall reduction in adult criminal activity and associated poor life outcomes," Mr Power said.

But he had to defend the Government's policy priorities to the audience, who accused the Government of supporting punitive, populist policies such as the three-strikes law and juvenile boot camps over evidence-based - but politically unpopular - solutions.

Mr Power said punitive policies were not incompatible with preventive ones, and patience was needed for the Government to achieve enduring solutions.

Rethinking Crime and Punishment director Kim Workman told the conference the evidence favoured early prevention and residential wrap-around care, rather than hardline measures such as boot camps.

"In the last few years, we have introduced the things that don't work," Mr Workman said.

The director of KPMG's government advisory, Mike Bazett, said the Government should consider what was happening in Britain, where the community, volunteer and private sectors have been invited to reduce re-offending and will be paid only if they achieve a 10 per cent reduction.

Competition led to greater innovation, he said, and it did not matter who could achieve the results, as long as they were achieved.